SpaceX Dragon Crew Capsule Splashes Down off Pensacola, Florida, After Two-Month Mission to Space Station

Despite a tropical storm on the other side of Florida, the SpaceX crew capsule made a successful splashdown Sunday afternoon in the Gulf of Mexico.

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken returned to Earth from the International Space Station inside the Dragon capsule, named Endeavour by its crew, at 2:48 p.m.

The capsule landed in the Gulf off Pensacola in Florida's Panhandle and was greeted by a recovery ship and two smaller boats. Hurley and Behnken remained inside the spacecraft as the two smaller boats moved toward them.

The weather off Pensacola was partly cloudy with the temperature about 89 degrees. At the splashdown site, winds were slightly more than 2 mph and waves were about 1 foot. Tropical Storm Isaias was affecting Florida's Atlantic Coast.

President Donald Trump tweeted a thank you to the team minutes after the splashdown.

The splashdown was the first in 45 years for NASA. The last one was on July 24, 1975, when a joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz mission ended.

The "Endeavour" undocked from the space station at 7:35 p.m. EDT Saturday. At 1:56 p.m. Sunday, the capsule performed a deorbit burn that lasted for 11.5 minutes.

Two drogue parachutes deployed at about 18,000 feet while the capsule was moving about 350 mph. At about 6,000 feet, four main chutes opened while the capsule was still zipping along at about 119 mph.

Members of the recovery crew, which included doctors and nurses, had been quarantined for two weeks and were tested for the coronavirus to protect Hurley and Behnken, The Associated Press reported.

The capsule was lifted out of the water and onto the recovery ship a few minutes after 3:15 p.m.

SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, became the first private company to launch people into orbit.

SpaceX next plans to send a crew of four astronauts to the space station at the end of September. That crew is expected to spend six months aboard the station.